My Kid Cures Cancer Podcast Episode 005

Dr. Veronique Desaulniers, or Dr. V as we know and love her, lays out the core principles of her Seven Essentials System, we get her take on a plethora of widely contested issues within the world of natural health and cancer healing, and she sets the record straight on the most prevalent misconceptions in breast cancer.

In This Episode:

Breast cancer myths exposed – Do human hormones, specifically estrogen, cause cancer? Do plant estrogens such as those in soy contribute to cancer? Is the BRCA gene really something to be feared? Does your oncologist really have enough information to pronounce you cured?

“Let Food Be Your Medicine” – Dr. V’s take on natural sugar intake during the healing process, dairy, and individual diet customization based on DNA and blood type.

As always, all of the information you learn about natural cancer treatments in an adult context is very valuable and applicable to childhood cancer. It just takes a little extra thought to go the extra step in applying it to your situation. Here are a few of my thoughts on the seven essentials as they apply to childhood cancer.

Let Food Be Your Child’s Medicine

Whole Food Sugars for Cancer Fighting Kids

I’ve heard countless examples of kids getting well using both the ketogenic, glucose restrictive approach AND the Gerson-inspired approach of juicing carrots and other fruits and vegetables high in glucose (and fructose). The Max Love Project is a childhood cancer organization that is very big on the ketogenic diet and sees incredible results time after time with families who implement it for their children. On the flipside there are many stories like that of Leanne Woodland’s who turned around her son’s death sentence with juicing and supplements.

My personal feelings on the debate are that both sides are right and I think ideally the two approaches should be rotated. The key thing to note is that both have been successfully implemented in children.

How to Make Anticancer Nutrition Work with Children

For children very young or older ones who you can explain the need for it to, what we always stress most is the use of an NG feeding tube. This is how we were able to flood Ryder’s body with nutrition without a second thought to how any of it tasted.

For kids that simply will not take a tube (please try multiple times and don’t give up without extreme persistence first), everything can be adapted to a pleasing way to take by mouth that is tasty enough for any kid to accept, it just takes a lot of trial and error.

For all of these situations, this is where our coaching program can really help you get up to speed as the last three years of our lives have been nothing but trial and error figuring out how to make all of this work!

Reduce Your Child’s Toxic Exposure

Electromagnetic Fields Are Even Worse for Children Than Adults

At a common sense level, if it’s bad for an adult it’s going to be really bad for a kid. And this certainly holds true in the case of EMFs, especially in the case of very small children as their skulls have not fully formed and provide less of a barrier to the brain.

Here are a few section titles in the Bioinitiative Report of most interest as it applies specifically to children: Evidence For Genotoxic Effects – RFR And ELF DNA Damage, Evidence For Childhood Cancers (Leukemia), Fertility And Reproduction Effects Of EMF, Fetal And Neonatal Effects Of EMF, Findings In Autism Consistent With EMF And RFR.

Balance Your Child’s Energy

It’s never too early to get your kid in to see a good chiropractor. Think about the route they took just being born (assuming it was not via C-Section. If so, establishing a healthy microbiome should be a top priority) and how that may have bent them out of shape!

Energy medicine is also an extremely easy form of therapy to apply to children as it does not require swallowing anything or sitting through anything uncomfortable. Aside from the Rife machine, a pair of Tesla Energy Lights were very generously donated to Ryder that he sits between every day. These are very expensive and we would not have been able to afford them on our own, but I know that the manufacturer does sell used models as well.

A less expensive option that we are currently making payments on and will have very soon that I believe is very promising and deserves a hard look from anyone going through cancer or chronic illness of any kind for that matter is a machine called the Bioptron.

Heal Your Child’s Emotional Wounds

While at first this might not seem at all applicable, when you think about the concept of the placebo effect written about above it becomes absolutely crucial.

You are, in essence, responsible for safeguarding your child’s emotions and outlook. Above all else they look to you to determine how to interpret any given situation. So if your attitude is doom and gloom, theirs will be too. Even if it only comes off in your overall aura and not anything you say to them directly. You’ve got to maintain a positivity that will radiate to your child. Keep this in mind when considering who you’re going to allow to spend time with your child as well.

Embrace Biological Dentistry for Your Child

While hopefully your child doesn’t have any root canals or fillings to worry about (actually I suppose fillings are entirely possible depending on their age), biological dentists also use the most non-toxic cleaning methods and there’s no reason not to take your kid to one for their dental care.

Repair Your Child’s Body with Therapeutic Plants

It can be frustrating always hearing about studies on natural anti-cancer compounds in relation to adult cancers, but there is a good deal of research on them for many childhood cancers as well! You just have to look for them.

Try out the advanced search in PubMed. Type in the type of cancer your child is healing in one of the search boxes, and then the plant or compound you’re interested in in the other and see what you get. Start with the most well researched compounds like curcumin or genistein and go from there.

You don’t have to be a scientist or a trained researcher to get the gist of what was accomplished in the study. Just dive in! Once you start reading through a number of these studies you’ll start making connections and forming new lines of thought that you would never have otherwise. This type of research can be incredibly empowering for parents and this is exactly how we went about choosing what to do for our son.

That being said we always strongly encourage working with a naturopathic oncologist when considering potential natural compounds both in terms of dosage and interaction with conventional treatments. Note that not every naturopath is a naturopathic oncologist, and not all naturopathic oncologists work with children, but many do.

Oncanp.org and bestanswerforcancer.org both maintain state by state listings of naturopathic oncologists. From there you just need to call around to find out who you might be able to work with. If you’re having trouble finding one in your area to work with you, please let us know as we’re often able to point parents to a naturopath who will consult with them remotely.

Adopt Very Early Detection for Your Child

When you hear about these tests it can at first be frustrating as they are typically talked about in the context of adult cancers as to what each test does and does not test for. The same philosophy of just needing to do one more step of extra research applies here as well.

Most of these tests are testing for certain proteins or enzymes associated with particular cancer cells. Even if the information associated with a particular test doesn’t indicate the type of childhood cancer you’re researching, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t test for it.

Hopefully you’ve still got that PubMed tab in your browser open (as I always do!). Once you find out what enzyme or protein a particular test is looking for, just search for it in combination with the cancer type and keep going through the various tests available (again, detailed out in Cancer Free! Are You Sure?) until you find a match. ☺

Takeaways from the Dr. Veronique Desaulniers Interview

This was really a great interview with Dr. V, just like our previous episodes with Chris Wark, Robert Scott Bell and Dr. Wolfe we’ve been following her ever since very early on getting into all of this when she was featured in the original Truth About Cancer documentary series, The Quest for the Cures. Even though we certainly weren’t dealing with Breast Cancer, there was something about her so positive and uplifting that we were drawn to her right away and have gotten so much incredible information and inspiration from her ever since.

Like I tell her in the interview, even though she is known as the Breast Cancer Conqueror and her book is called Heal Breast Cancer Naturally: The Seven Essential Steps to Beating Breast Cancer these are really seven essential steps for ANYONE who would like to beat cancer and it really shows through in the interview. It was jam packed with incredible information and we covered a whole range of things you need to be thinking about when endeavoring to heal cancer along with busting some of the most widely held misconceptions of Breast Cancer.

Busting Breast Cancer Myths

Do human hormones, such as estrogen, cause cancer?

Dr. V makes the point here that if that were true then every 20 year old girl on the planet would develop cancer as their estrogen begins to surge. Normal human bodily functions do not cause cancer.

What does cause cancer are xenoestrogens. These are compounds found in plastics (BPA is just one, there are many more you don’t hear about even in “BPA free” products) and other synthetic materials that mimic estrogen in the body and throw everything out of whack.

One could also have a methylation problem caused by a host of possible factors in which they aren’t breaking down and eliminating estrogen properly which can cause problems. Here again though, the methylation problem is the issue, not the estrogen itself.

Moreover, women need the estrogen they do naturally produce. Their body makes if for a reason! If we suppress the production altogether with phamaceuticals, we’re begging for unintended consequences.

What about plant estrogens, like from soy?

Dr. V makes the point here that plant estrogens, called phytoestrogens, are in all kinds of everyday vegetables, seeds, and grains that you don’t really hear anyone calling into question. So to stop consuming everything from flax seeds to lentils to carrots to apples just because of their phytoestrogen content would be a little silly.

She further went on to say since phytoestrogens are very weak estrogens, they will actually fill the receptor sites in your cells and block the stronger xenoestrogens from attaching and doing their damage.

When I asked specifically about unfermented soy (not necessarily just in regard to phytoestrogens but also because that’s what you hear the biggest concern about for a variety of reasons) she did stress moderation but said if you have a handful of edamame here and there it’s not going to be the end of the world and that moreover there is some research about edamame reversing the BRCA gene mutation.

How scared should I be of the BRCA gene?

Dr. V notes that in a healthy body, the BRCA gene is actually a tumor suppressor gene responsible for DNA repair. So in a healthy human you want a fully expressed BRCA gene. It’s the mutation or loss of the gene that is the concern.

What people need to know about the mutation is that very little cancer is inherently genetic, meaning you don’t inherit a cancer time bomb. Even if you do inherit an increased susceptibility to something going wrong, the field of epigenetics is showing very clearly our environment and lifestyle are still responsible for whether or not genes get expressed properly.

Dr. V went on to note that we shouldn’t be focused on the gene itself but rather looking for what caused the mutation in the first place. Radiation for mammograms perhaps?

The Seven Essentials to Beating Cancer Naturally

I went through Dr. V’s seven essentials and asked her about a couple topics within each essential that I felt either to be highlighted or discussed the most. To see everything you need to be thinking about within these essentials, get the book!

Let Food Be Your Medicine – Essential One

Whole Food Sugar When Dealing with a Cancer Diagnosis

Dr. V differs from previous guests we’ve had on thus far on and certainly falls closer to some of the guests on future episodes you’ll hear soon such as Dr. Thomas Seyfried, Travis Christofferson, and Dr. Nasha Winters on this topic.

Veronique does recommend limiting sugar, as cancer is a metabolic disease so not providing fuel to the fire does certainly make sense. She also mentioned she just got off of a hardcore five month ketogenic diet so she could see what it was all about. We agreed that while the ketogenic diet is likely not a long term “healthy diet,” it is an incredible tool for retraining your healthy cells to use the metabolic pathway of running off of ketones, which is something cancer cells are unable to do.

More importantly, she stresses the need to find out what food actually does to YOU, specifically to your blood sugar in this case. If something you’re doing is causing your blood sugar to massively spike, be it carrot juice or anything else, then that’s something you’ll want to take a hard look at as there is plenty of research out there on that being very deleterious to overall health and longevity.

Should We Be Consuming Dairy?

Dr. V certainly is not one of those “as long as it’s raw and grass fed then have as much as you want” type of people.

While she notes that she does have enjoy a bulletproof (with butter and MCT oil) coffee or tea and uses ghee or cheese here and there, she does limit dairy and again stressed the principle of moderation here.

Individualized Diets

“If you’re talking to somebody and they tell you ‘this is the only right way to eat,’ then run the other way” – Dr. V

Veronique makes note that above all else the best diet is the one that’s best for YOU.

The blood type seems to produce a lot of good results, but the ultimate answer is to get your DNA sequenced through a 23 and me test. When you work with someone who knows how to interpret the results you get back, it will tell you exactly how you handle every nutrient class.

Reduce Your Toxic Exposure – Essential Two

Avoid Electromagnetic Fields as Much as Possible

Dr. V referenced an experiment that gained international attention a group of ninth graders in Denmark conducted measuring the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produced by wifi, cell phones and cell phone towers, etc. on sprouting seeds and the results were black and white. The put two groups of seeds from the same batch in separate locations, one right next to a few wifi routers, and one not near any routers. The seeds not exposed to wifi sprouted up nicely as they should, the group next to the routers did not sprout or mutated when they did.

Veronique also mentioned the BioInitiative Report, a comprehensive study from well-regarded scientists around the world gathering all of the available published literature into one place documenting all of the ways (and there’s a lot of them) EMFs have been proven harmful to human health.

Dr. V and I both mentioned that we disable the wifi on our routers (you may have to call your internet provider to have them walk you through it or do it remotely) and hard wire everything in our homes that requires a connection using good old fashioned Ethernet cables and USB adaptors when needed.

Nowadays we even have to go one step beyond this as some cable companies are enabling a separate 5G connection to use as a hotspot for anyone nearby unbeknownst to their customers, even if their regular wifi is disabled. The only way I know of to be absolutely sure this is not occurring in your home, and to know the EMF level in your home and other places you spend time regularly in for that matter is to get an EMF meter. Having one has been incredibly empowering for us in figuring out how to best avoid EMF for our family.

Know Your Microbial Load

Fungi, viruses and other microbial pathogens often go overlooked in the discussion of healing cancer, but they are vitally important to address.

They can be the direct cause of cancer (and until you remove the cause you’re not going to heal the cancer), or as Dr. V points out if your immune system is continually bogged down battling this infection then it’s not going to be able to properly address the cancer cells which tend to be sneakier in the first place.

Veronique points out there are several tests that can be run and ways to attack the issue based on the results, and that this is something you definitely want to be working with a naturopath or other expert in this area on as there is a lot of complexity to it.

Balance Your Energy – Essential Three

Dr. V notes here that something I think about often and what I try to relate I learn back to, that modern science is coming to find in quantum physics and elsewhere that we, and the entire world around us, are less than one billionth of what we would consider to be “physical matter.” The rest is pure energy. And they’re getting less and less sure about that billionth being a solid object as well.

When you start thinking about your health in terms of energy, it opens up a whole new thought process on how you evaluate what you need to be focusing on. A few practical steps to take to begin ensuring proper energetic flow are chiropractic care, proper sleep, and testing and balancing of hormones through herbs and potentially bio-identical hormone therapy.

Heal Your Emotional Wounds – Essential Four

Another highly overlooked but absolutely crucial area in healing caner is getting your mind in the right place. This isn’t just woo-woo feel good stuff, it has very real and measurable consequences for better or worse. Dr. V mentions a few great resources here.

In Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, Dr. Candace Pert goes in depth into the field of psychoneuroimmunology and shows how the thoughts you think literally produce very real chemical reactions within your body. These chemical reactions can either be healthy or harmful due to the nature of your thoughts.

And in You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter, Dr. Joe Dispenza shows just how powerful your mind can be in determining your health outcome by relating many stories of patients with afflictions of all types curing themselves with nothing at all besides believing in a placebo. Conversely, this can also go the other way as Dr. Dispenza shows examples of people getting very sick or even dying just from being misdiagnosed with something they didn’t even have! This is why it is unspeakably wrong of oncologists to tell cancer patients “there’s nothing to be done” and give them an exact timeline of when they will die.

Embrace Biological Dentistry – Essential Five

Dr. V laid out that a biological dentist takes into account your mouth’s connection to the rest of your body, and a regular dentist for the most part does not.

When a rotting tooth is removed and a fake one put in its place over the rot, this a surefire path to an infection that will spread throughout the body. When something is drilled into your mouth, that’s a foreign element to your body and it will never stop spending its energy trying to no avail to get rid of it.

By now hopefully we should have all heard that the mercury and other toxic elements in traditional fillings can be leaked or vaporized into the rest of your body. While these are going away in a lot of (but not all…) conventional dentists’ offices, a good biological dentist will be well trained on how to deal with existing fillings. Just getting it drilled out by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing can actually be far more dangerous than even leaving it in.

One thing I didn’t know about biological dentistry until reading the book, is that there are different options when it comes to the newer, non-metallic fillings in use and that a biological dentist will test to see which composite material is most compatible with your body.

Heal With Therapeutic Plants – Essential Six

Bloodroot

Bloodroot is a plant that I’ve heard a lot about in the context of healing cancer, but it’s always sort of intimidated me (apparently for good reason!) so I’d never dove too deep into researching it.

In a topical salve, people have used bloodroot to literally eject tumors from their body. In fact, Dr. V herself used a salve like this in her own journey healing breast cancer, and her skin indeed opened up and the tumor indeed came out. While on the surface it sounds too good to be true, there are some catches which Veronique is quick to point out.

This is the sort of therapy that “things can go wrong” with and you need to be working with someone who knows what they’re doing. Since the tumor literally travels through your body, bloodroot is most often used for superficial tumors, but Dr. V has heard of it being used on more internal tumors as well. Extreme caution is needed here however as you want to be sure nothing important will be harmed if the tumor does move.

Bloodroot can also be taken internally to target cancer cells, but again, someone very familiar with the plant needs to be guiding you on dosage, frequency, what to watch for, and so on as reactions can be severe. Dr. V did however mention Biominix, a bloodroot-based formulated to be a bit gentler.

RGCC Test

Dr. V also points out what more and more practitioners and patients alike are using in determining the best compounds to use for the exact cancer they are dealing with, and that is the RGCC test.

The Research Genetic Cancer Centre has reportedly found a way to replicate a patient’s own cancer cells using a small sample. They’re then able to expose those cancer cells to a variety of compounds to show what will have the greatest impact on those exact cells. They can also report of conventional chemotherapy drugs to find out what will be the most effective on that side of the fence as well for the ultimate integrative protocol. Many practitioners of insulin potentiated, targeted low dose chemo use these tests.

The one note of caution I give in the introduction to the show is something I pointed out to a mom we’re working with in our coaching program who asked about it. It all comes down to budget as the test does cost two to three thousand dollars. While the information can certainly save you a ton of money in only getting supplements you know are going to be the most beneficial, there are also a lot of “basics” in getting set up on a path to natural or integrative recovery and I wouldn’t want to see someone spend all of their money on the test and not have any left over to do anything with the results.

Adopt Very Early Detection – Essential Seven

Dr. V talks about some of her favorite tests for early detection and long term maintenance. Contrary to what you’ll hear in the hospital, there are many ways to test for cancer outside of a PET scan, MRI, or mammogram. This information can be invaluable in finding a new cancer at an extremely early stage (pre stage 1) when it is still relatively simple to address through diet and lifestyle changes and also to track your progress in healing from cancer and making sure it’s truly “gone.”

A popular test Dr. V mentioned was the Oncoblot Test, which tests for 27 different types of cancer.

I just completed an interview with Jenny Hrbacek, author of Cancer Free! Are You Sure?. Jenny’s book lays out all of these types of tests available today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss it!